The Fear of the Left

As Midterm election season starts to heat up, there is still no clear indication in Michigan as to who the Republican Gubernatorial challenger to Gretchen Whitmer will be.

Despite what you've heard, whoever challenges Gretchen Whitmer faces an uphill battle

Safe bets are on either James Craig or Tudor Dixon, both of whom I fear will need unprecedented and undivided support from the Republican electorate if Whitmer is to be unseated.

This fear that I have about the Republicans ability to defeat Gretchen Whitmer in a primary is both saddening and surprising to me. A few years ago I would have told you that Republicans could run a burlap sack against Whitmer and defeat her soundly, but I have now realized this conclusion was short sighted and narrow minded.

Like many others, I generally felt that the overwhelming disdain for Gretchen Whitmer’s dictatorial Covid policies and her insatiable need to interfere in the private sector would be enough to doom her in 2022. People don’t like it when politicians mess with their lives, businesses, and children, you know? Despite these factors carrying weight with many voters, I now realize that I failed to account for the similarly significant electoral variable weighing in the Governor’s favor:

The relentless, unjustifiable fear mongering of the left.

You see, for every person out there who has correctly classified Gretchen Whitmer’s 15 months of unilateral decision making as unconstitutional and state destroying, there exists just as many people who have bought the left’s fear driven narrative concerning those same events hook, line, and sinker.

There are still millions of Michigan voters who fully believe Covid-19 is a thousand times more serious than actual facts suggest, and as shocking as it sounds, those same people are thoroughly convinced that Gretchen Whitmer’s totalitarian approach to Covid-19 was “the right thing to do” and “necessary to protect vulnerable people.”

Despite the facts, a lot of people are still living life needlessly terrified of Covid-19.

It doesn’t matter that numbers don’t support either of these statements whatsoever. It doesn’t matter that most reasonable people have come around to the idea that the vast majority of decisions that were made in response to Covid have now been proven to be over reactive, unnecessary, and destructive.

All that matters is how people feel. Because that’s what makes them vote.

And say what you want about the left, they have done a remarkable job at using fear to convince a huge amount of people that a mainly innocuous virus is actually lethal, and that only they know best how to keep everyone safe from it.

And as long as they can keep convincing people of this, Gretchen Whitmer has a chance.

A dangerously legitimate chance.

People constantly tell me I’m harping on the issue too much, but I still believe at its core this next election is all about Covid-19. It’s not just a chance for voters to state how they feel about the way it should be handled moving forward, but, more importantly, it’s about voters making a statement about how it was handled from 2020 onward. The confirmation bias of the left is so strong that they are willing to look past the painfully obvious failures of Gretchen Whitmer simply because it will provide them an opportunity to beat their drum and continue to insist they were “right about Covid all along.”

The right is not accurately accounting for this vindictively driven confirmation bias, or for the resounding sense of fear the left’s leaders have deliberately created in their base. Stated directly, Gretchen Whitmer is going to get a lot of votes from people who simply hate the right and want to die on a hill insisting they and the Governor were right about everything. She’s also going to get a lot of votes from people who are utterly and unreasonably afraid of Covid-19, and have been fully manipulated into believing that they need” Gretchen Whitmer to protect them from a virus that we now know is only truly dangerous to an infinitesimally small number of people.

All of this is just to say, whether it is James Craig, Tudor Dixon, or some dark horse candidate that no one is expecting as of now, the right cannot underestimate Gretchen Whitmer’s chances. There remains an echo chamber of Republican thought which continues to inaccurately and to its own demise insist that Whitmer is so hated in Michigan that it would be shocking if she manages to get a single vote. I can’t stress how potentially and state breakingly incorrect that view is.

Gretchen Whitmer won Michigan easily in 2018. She cannot be underestimated.

All individual Michigan voters, regardless of their level of dedication to candidates in the past, need to view this upcoming election as a personal burden to bear. They must make conscious, unique efforts to finance, support, and encourage unity concerning whatever Republican candidate ends up receiving the nomination. There is simply no room for division within the party.

If this doesn’t happen, Gretchen Whitmer will be Governor of Michigan for another four years, a disaster the state may not survive.